


Impractical Magic

by thischarmingand



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caleb Widogast Has Issues, Emotion magic, Essek Thelyss has issues, M/M, Mollymauk Tealeaf is just here to party, Non-Linear Narrative, magicians au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:15:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22745404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thischarmingand/pseuds/thischarmingand
Summary: Each year, new students at Brakebills University for Magical Pedagogy must undergo a series of trials, culminating in a final assignment: Reveal your truest self to another student before midnight, or be expelled.Oh — you'll also be naked and magically tied together the whole time. It's educational! Or, in the words of Caleb Widogast, “Maybe our university is just run by perverts?”The MagiciansAU.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 20
Kudos: 95





	Impractical Magic

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warnings: Some discussions of Caleb's canonical backstory, though the actual abuse and violence are kept vague here. References to hospitalization and mental health treatment.
> 
> 99% of the plot beats in this fic are taken directly from the first season of _The Magicians_ TV show. If you've seen the show, you should expect similar here in terms of alcohol and drug references and slightly dubious consent (think something similar to two intoxicated but willing characters hooking up, only with magic). Also, I have retained the extremely silly ending of "Impractical Applications," the main episode this is based on, so. Yeah. That's a choice I made!
> 
> If you have not seen the show. Uh... I'm sorry? It's really just Like This.

**_xii._ **

The chime of the clocktower in the central quad barely reaches the northern edge of the Brakebills University campus. If Caleb had not been straining into the darkness for some ten minutes, he might have missed the soft notes of the eleven o’clock bells altogether.

No way round it now. There is nothing else he can think of to try, save for the most transparent of stalling tactics, and not much time remaining besides. He’s going to have to say it. Unless he wants all of this to be for naught.

“One hour left.” His voice feels thick in his throat. A clearing cough doesn’t help as much as he’d like. “Do you want to take a run at it again?”

A sigh, and the enchanted rope holding his wrists flexes and twists as his — companion? partner? fellow prisoner? — tugs against their shared bindings. “What do you think the founders of this institution were thinking when they designed this test?”

“Jester’s always claiming she finds those smutty books of hers in the school library,” Caleb says, trying for a laugh. “Maybe our university is just run by perverts?”

In the moonlight, Essek’s pale grey eyes glow like a cat’s. The rest of him is a smudge in the dark, purple-black skin slipping away in shadow, lines of him never quite crisp when he looks for them. If it weren’t for his eyes and the movement of their joined wrists Caleb could believe he’s alone out here,enjoying a crisp fall evening in upstate New York in the most idiotic fashion imaginable. 

Drow can see in the dark. He’s read that. It’s one of the many things he’s trying not to think about right now.

“Such a rich cultural exchange this is,” Essek mutters, not for the first time. “And it’s your turn to start.”

“Ja, hold on, I’m thinking.” That’s a lie. Fewer thoughts, that’s what he’d like. He tries to remember what Jester had passed along from her lessons in meditation. Deep, even breaths to help clear the mind. An image of tranquility. A sunrise. A green meadow. Floating alone on an empty sea.

Two glowing circles in the blackness. Essek’s still staring. Waiting. Caleb closes his eyes and tries to smooth waves into ripples. 

“Four years ago, I did something terrible.” Still stalling _._ “People died.”

Essek’s voice comes to him from a far off distant shore. “What people?”

Calm waters. Empty seas. Let the rest of it fall away.

“My parents.”

  
  


**_iv._ **

“And this is not considered cheating because…”

Mollymauk shrugs. “Everybody does it. You’ll be fine.” 

Not technically an answer to Essek’s question. But what had he expected? He’s been here two months and can already name four people who’ve earned passing grades due to the scope and creativity of their academic dishonesty. Whatever else there is to say about Brakebills Universitys’ approach to curriculum design, it certainly allows for individual interpretations. At least, that is the way Essek will phrase it in his reports home. 

“You in or you out?” Nott plucks a small glass bottle from a cardboard box and waves it his way. Travel sized gin, surprisingly expensive and, more surprisingly, still full. 

_Cultural immersion_ , he reminds himself. _Research._ And it would be extremely awkward if he were the only person in the room to say no. “I’m in.”

Nott throws the bottle at his head. Essek sketches a gravity spell in two sharp motions and narrowly avoids being hit in the face. Or worse, trying to catch. 

“He looks so cool when he does that,” Nott announces to the room at large.

A ragged circle starts to form as the others make their selections. On his right, Jester has forgone the alcohol and is emptying most of a bottle of gummi vitamins into her purse in preparation. On his left, Fjord has not-so-subtly palmed his tiny vodka behind his back, better to tip it into a potted fern. 

Essek refuses to take an interest in Caleb’s choice of bottle.

“Everybody ready? Cheers,” Mollymauk throws the tequila back without waiting for the rest of them to so much as open their drinks. “Fjord, walk us through the boring part?”

“Right, uh,” Fjord jerks away from the fern and holds his now-empty bottle up to the light. “The hedge witches I used to, uh, do some work for, called this an emotion bottle…”

  
  
**_x._ **

Essek has been trying. He truly has. He’s borne strange food and shared washrooms and professors who simply must teach class outside on warm days even though the sun makes his head ache. He’s ignored all manner of gawking and whispering just because the other humanoids on campus refuse to get over the novelty of having a drow for a classmate. He’s politely attended Mollymauk’s increasingly loud parties and as politely turned down Nott’s offers of shots, and improved his mental shielding to the point where Jester’s psychic broadcasting only registers when she’s trying to speak to him directly. Whatever criticisms the Dynasty may have for him, by the Luxon’s light they cannot say he hasn’t tried. 

At the other end of a magical length of rope, Caleb Widowgast wiggles his fingers experimentally and frowns when no magic comes out. Essek looks away quickly.

“This is your third and final trial,” says Nott. She is wearing a crown made of buttons and a pair of sunglasses are sliding down her nose. Black sunglasses. _Essek’s_ sunglasses.

You’ll have four hours to reveal your truest selves and break the bonds,” Mollymauk adds. The tiefling is wearing what appears to be a tapestry, and even that’s an enviable option right now. “Pass, and you’ll be allowed to continue your studies...”

“Fail, and they’ll mind wipe you and send you home.” Nott squeezes Caleb’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, you’re very smart. You’ll be fine.”

“They probably won’t send you home either,” Mollymauk says to Essek thoughtfully. “Part of that whole diplomatic immunity thing, right?

The first trial of the day he had understood. Translation of arcane magics is a necessary skill for any magician interested in conducting research of substance. While he could hardly say Brakebills had covered the subject well in its coursework, there was some logic underpinning the test.

Then, he had been drugged and left in the woods with a length of rope with which was supposed to cut down a tree. That trial had seemed… harder to justify. But again, he had tried. 

“And during this trial” Essek asks, in as neutral a voice as he can manage, “what does the nudity add to the proceedings?”

“Oh,” Mollymauk grins at him, fangs glistening in the dim moonlight. “I think that’s just for fun.”

**vi.**

Brakebills has no business teaching battle magic. 

Caleb can understand the reasoning behind it: The rising tensions with the Dynasty, the murder of several high-profile magicians on and off campus, the abyssal creatures that keep manifesting in the university cafeteria — all are excellent arguments for self-defense training. 

That the board of the university had opted to offer said training using a magical discipline that typically requires a decade of study for even the most basic of spells is... troubling. Caleb can’t feel troubled himself (that emotion, along with the others, has been bottled and placed in his back pocket for safe keeping) but he’s certain someone, somewhere should be. 

A few feet away, Essek spins his hands in the air and fires a stream of energy at an empty tin can perched on a tree stump. The impact sends it flying sideways, skidding to a stop at Caleb’s feet. 

When he picks it up it’s warm to the touch, with a small dent where the strike had landed. “An adequate first attempt.”

“Thank you for your assessment.” Essek curls his fingers, and the can wafts back to its earlier position. “Do you wish to take your turn?” 

“That would be the best use of our time,” Caleb agrees, and readies himself for another attempt.

 _Intense emotional regulation_ was how his professors had explained the required frame of mind for battle magic. In his usual state, Caleb had been lucky to conjure enough force to rustle a piece of paper.

Now it hardly takes a thought to send the can rocketing backwards, metal smoking from the impact. A task completed successfully. Not satisfying in this state, but he can still recognize the value of a job well done. 

Nott takes aim next, and takes off a chunk of the tree stump with her attempt. Emotional suppression spells can’t combat physical intoxication, Caleb notes. Mollymauk and Jester manage decent form but rush the power-up phase and neither of their spells has the force it should. Fjord vaporizes the can on his first try. 

Round two. He tries to study himself this time. The emotion bottle will only last a few hours, just long enough for a taste of the control they’ll need in class. Perfecting the motions and forms is all well and good, but nothing is as important to catalogue as the feeling in his own head. Weightlessness, emptiness. 

Freedom.

Another can explodes. 

“Well done,” Essek says, without inflection. 

**_vii._ **

Essek’s mind is a howl. Adrenaline shakes and breath he can’t catch and nothing in his head but the urge to reach out and grind the first thing he encounters into dust. Formulas unspool and reformulate: The pounds of gravitational force he’d need to shatter a table. The proper positioning for a well that will collapse a skull from the outside in. No need for the human magicians’ blasting and charging, just the force of the earth made deadly with the right flex of his wrists—

He needs to get out of here. Fjord had warned them about the aftereffects of the emotion suppression spell. He should have left well before any of the others started opening their bottles. Should have gone somewhere quiet and dark and without quite so many people crying or laughing or—

_I stay out too late! Got nothing in my brain!_

—or whatever it is Jester’s broadcasting into the mind of every magician in the tri-state area as she paces the cottage at the edges of Essek’s increasingly blurred vision. 

It is entirely possible he’s going to vomit in front of these people.

He’s trying to remember the path to the door when a heavy weight stomps down on his leg, and Caleb’s fat ginger tabby walks across him like he’s part of the furniture. Frumpkin butts his head against his owner’s chin with an insistent purr and Caleb scoops him to his chest. He’s trembling all over, but Essek can see something calmer creep into his expression and — Ah. It’s good to be able to notice things again.

Caleb angles the cat towards him. “You can scritch him under the chin if you want.” 

Essek darts a glance at the other end of the couch. Fjord and Nott have their arms curled around each other. Both appear to be weeping. Nott also appears to be drinking. In the centre of the room Mollymauk and Jester are working their way through some sort of dance number.

He gives the cat a tentative rub under its chin. Frumpkin rumbles happily and leans into his touch. Essek is horrified to find himself close to tears. 

Caleb has buried his face into Frumpkin’s side, and when he comes up for air his eyes look alarmingly watery as well. “I think I need to lie down for a while.”

“That sounds like a good idea to me as well.” He’s a little distracted. Frumpkin is licking his fingers now and there is no gravity spell with the level of finesse required to keep his eyes from welling over.

“Oh,” Caleb’s eyes go wide. “Did you want to come upstairs too?” 

Essek very nearly chokes on his own tongue.

  
  


_**i.** _

Caleb is going to die. He’s going to trip over a coffee table and crack open his skull or — or choke on his own spit. Spontaneous combustion seems like a viable option. 

This is not the way he had seen the evening progressing. He has to hand it to the Physical Cottage’s soundproofing. From the back garden, the house had looked mostly deserted, only a few lights in upper windows suggesting occupants. 

“Come on, I’ll show you how to break in,” Nott had said, which would have seemed strange a few weeks earlier, but is less so after having encountered several of her experiments in weaponizing the cottage’s front door. 

Then Nott had recited an incantation for reattaching loose buttons over a flower trellis, and Caleb had found himself in a press of bodies, all smelling of sweat and alcohol and moving in time to music loud enough to rattle the liquor bottles in the bar. 

_“What are these people doing here?”_

_“It’s Wednesday night. Mollymauk says a party breaks up the week. I’m getting a drink, do you want something?”_

_“Nott, wait_ _—_ _”_

At which point she had, of course, disappeared utterly.

There are so many people here. Caleb recognizes a few faces from classes and more from Nott’s campus tour, but even then there are still so many strangers around him, pressing in and sloshing their drinks onto his shoes and elbowing him in the ribs when he tries to sneak through the crowd. There’s a back door in the kitchen that exits out onto the patio. He’ll go out through there, make the whole thing up to Nott later and make a mental note to find alternative accommodations every Wednesday until he graduates. Simple enough. 

The crowd thins out towards the back hall and Caleb stumbles through bodies and into the kitchen dazed, sweating and stinking of cheap whiskey and oranges.

There is a man in the kitchen. Caleb registers four things about him instantly:

  1. He is a drow;
  2. He is wearing sunglasses indoors;
  3. He is extremely beautiful; and, while the glasses make it impossible to say for sure,
  4. He is almost certainly staring at him.



“Sorry,” Caleb says, reflexively. 

“The washroom is on the other side of the hallway,” the drow says, as though he’s been asked several times already.

“No, I—” he scrubs a hand over his face and tries to push his hair into some sort of order. “Just, ah, looking for some air. I won’t bother you.” 

He has his hand on the doorknob, patio in sight, when the drow says, “It’s trapped.”

“What?”

“Top right corner.”

Caleb looks up and sees what can only be Nott’s handwork. The mechanism is new but the vial of green liquid attached to it is familiar. The last one had ruined Caleb’s favourite sweater. And he doesn’t have many to begin with. 

“Shit.” He lets his head thunk against the wood. 

“Could I offer you a glass of wine? I found a surprisingly good bottle of red behind some pans.” 

If he can’t leave he might as well be drunk. “Thank you.”

“Essek Thelyess,” the — the Essek says, and goes hunting for glasses. 

“Caleb Widogast.” 

“And what reason did you have for needing to escape this party without being seen, Caleb Widogast?” The cottage’s few unclaimed wine glasses are in a cupboard above the refrigerator. On his toes, Essek just manages to snag his fingers against the base. The glass wobbles, tips sideways, and Caleb is readying the levitation spell he’s been practicing when something 

Happens.

“And what reason did you have for needing to escape this party without being seen, Caleb Widogast?” Essek asks… again? The wine glass is still on the high shelf. Essek coaxes it to the countertop with a simple flotation spell of his own and pours a measure of deep red wine into the bottom.

“Because the person who invited me would have tried to make me stay, and parties are terrible.” Caleb says, distracted and too honest. The glass had fallen. He’d seen it. He hasn’t — his night terrors have been vivid at times, but some sort of general somatic hallucination, unprompted, would be… 

“In that case I won’t ask you if you want to dance after we finish our drinks,” Essek says, mouth quirking at the corner. 

He’s been under stress, but nothing more elevated than most days at Brakebills. And God knows the last therapist he’d tried to see had enough opinions about this place as a trigger in its own rights—

“Is something wrong?” 

“What was that?” Caleb blurts. Shit. What if it was nothing? Why did he ask?

“I apologize,” Essek stiffens, smirk gone. “I forget human magicians aren’t used to chronurgy. I should have warned you.”

Caleb pulls the wine glass towards him with shaking fingers and takes a long swallow. “They don’t teach time magic at Brakebills.”

He’d asked.

“Not as far as I know.” Essek holds up the wine bottle and makes a motion towards Caleb’s glass, refilling it when he nods.

“You’re from the Dynasty?”

“What gave it away?” Essek asks, with a flick of his hand that seems to encompass the whole of him, from delicately pointed ears and white curly hair to the deep purple of his skin. 

Caleb imagines downing himself in his glass. “I… didn’t want to presume.” 

“Cultural exchange program,” Essek says. “I start first year classes tomorrow. Apparently this is my campus tour.” 

“So you got Mollymauk as a chaperone.” Cons: Caleb probably won’t be able to hide from him until the heat death of the universe, when the awkwardness of this interaction will have faded. Pros: _Time magic._

“Should I be worried you knew that without more information?’ Essek asks. 

He can work this. He’s done it before. 

“Depends,” Caleb takes another swig of wine, tries to school his face into something easy, open, maybe a little mischievous. “How much do you like parties?”

Essek mirrors him, leaning an elbow onto the counter and giving the wine in his glass a lazy swirl. “Do you know, seven different people offered me drugs on my way in, and none of them were the same drug.” 

“Only seven? Slow night.”

“Do you have recommendations?” Even with his eyes hidden behind dark lenses, Essek lights up when he smiles.

“Not really.” A curl of anticipation in his belly. He can do this. “But if you help me dismantle that thing on the door, I could offer you a real tour.” 

“Should we bring the wine?” Essek asks.

He’s in. 

  
  


_**xi.** _

Caleb is doing something strange with his mouth. It’s all clicks and whistles and strange twitches of the lips. A spell? It doesn’t resemble any of the human dialects Essek had studied before his assignment to Brakebills, but perhaps it could be something more obscure. Perhaps the trial does not call for an exchange of secrets after all. It could be a puzzle, unlocked with the right application of nonlinear thinking — like the resolution of one of Caleb’s books.

For a moment, there’s hope. Then Caleb sighs and shakes his head. “It’s no good.”

“We should try it again,” Essek insists. “Together. I’m not familiar with the style of casting, but if you walk me through the formula I should be able to—”

“I was trying to call for Frumpkin,” Caleb says. 

“Your cat.” Essek has been sitting naked in a field with this man for at least eight minutes, but only now does he feel truly exposed. 

“Ja,” Caleb at least has the good grace to look embarrassed. “It is good in these situations to have some backup, you know?”

Essek is absolutely not answering that.

“Normally I’d just summon him like—” Caleb snaps his fingers. No cat appears. “But obviously... not. I was hoping he was in hearing range, but they must have left him in the woods.” 

Luxon’s light guide him, Essek actually feels concerned. “Will it survive the night?”

“He’s a good cat,” Caleb says, adding another mark to Essek’s running tally of Direct Questions Avoided by Magicians. “But I’ll need to give him some extra milk once we get out of this situation.”

“A thing I would prefer to do that as expediently as possible.” His skin already feels clammy and chilled. Nights in Rosohna were never this damp. “How does one reveal one’s true self?”

Caleb’s expression of forced cheer falters. If anything, Essek would say he looks ready to be sick. “I think we will have to tell each other things. Things we would prefer to keep close to our chests.” 

It is not becoming for an emissary of the Dynasty to scream profanity. Also, were he to start, Essek isn’t sure he would be able to stop.

“In that case, why don’t we start with childhood and debase ourselves from there?” he suggests.

He’ll admit to being a little pleased when Caleb flinches. 

**_viii._ **

He’s sinking. 

The mattress he inherited at the Physical Cottage is soft from too many years of tumbled bodies and not enough mending spells. If he could look down from the ceiling, Caleb thinks he would see a sunken indent where he’s lying, blankets and sheets starting to fill back in overtop of him. Once he’s fully submerged there will only be a faint seam in the bedding to show where he’s gone. 

“How is this not affecting you?”

His body feels full of lead. Even the weight of his fingertips drags on him. Caleb can feel the discs of his spine grate together when he turns his head—

And finds himself staring into twin, fisheyed reflections in Essek’s sunglasses. 

“What?” 

Essek pinches the bridge of his nose and scowls. “That. The singing.”

“Hold on.” He folds his hands together on his chest, taking down the ward with as little excess movement as he can handle. 

_“Shake it off! Shake it off_ _—_ _off_ _—_ _off! Shake it off! Shake it_ _—_ _hey does anyone want to go get donuts right now?”_

Caleb suppresses a huff of laughter. “She really likes that song, hey?”

“What did you just do?” The mattress heaves and sinks as Essek rolls towards him, up on one elbow to stare down into Caleb’s face. It makes his sunglasses slip down his nose, flicker of pale eyelashes visible before he shoves them back into place. “Was that a spell?”

Something about staring into his own mirrored eyes is starting to unsettle him. Caleb tries to focus on the ceiling over Essek’s shoulder. “I haven’t managed to work out a formulation that blocks out everything, but it muffles enough. I like to know I am alone in my own head sometimes.”

“You designed it yourself?” 

“I borrowed some bits and pieces.” He can still hear Jester humming in the back of his mind, but he seems to have tuned in for the end of the broadcast. Caleb hopes someone is getting her pastries. 

“Show me?” Essek pulls himself up into a seated position, making room for Caleb to do the same. “Human pop music is… I’m still learning to appreciate the finer nuances.” 

“Like this.” He draws his hands together as if starting a cat’s cradle and slowly builds out a box of enchantment. The volume of humming turns all the way down, like traffic outside the window of a childhood bedroom, or hushed voices from downstairs. 

Essek nods, jaw set in concentration, and starts to cast. The first motion goes well, but he’s off form by the second figure. Too sharp an angle on his thumbs, like one of his dunamantic formulations. Caleb catches him midair, carefully resettling his fingers into the proper configuration. “And move your wrists fluidly. Not so strong.” 

“Right,” Essek’s fingers flex against his, but the rest of him has gone so, so still. Shit. Of course he doesn’t want— after everything— Caleb should have known better than this.

He drops Essek’s hands, twists his own into a knot in his lap. “Sorry— that was—” 

Slim, clever fingers fly through the spell, and Caleb’s apology sputters out as Essek catches his face in both hands and drags him in for a kiss. 

**ii.**

Essek thinks this may be the strangest sight he’s encountered yet: Caleb Widogast behind the wheel of a once-silver compact car, hands drumming restlessly against the steering wheel as they navigate Midtown traffic. After a month ensconced in the Brakebills campus bubble he’d almost forgotten human magicians could drive. 

In the backseat, the plastic cat carrier begins frantically smashing itself against the passenger side door. 

“Turn right,” Essek says, as though Caleb could somehow have missed the racket. 

“Ja, ja,” Caleb mutters, and narrowly avoids sideswiping a taxi as he changes lanes. The next time Essek goes driving with a human, he’s going to ensure the vehicle has both its side mirrors before getting inside. 

If anyone but Mollymauk had asked him to hunt down a stolen magical tome in exchange for a favour, Essek would have cheerfully offered to demonstrate the effects of a gravitational compaction spell via their balls. Molly, however, has a terrifying level of access to seemingly all of campus, and his favour is more likely than most to come with a carefully curated liquor pairing. And Essek has to admit, he doesn’t object to the company for this particular expedition.

The car judders to a halt, narrowly missing a bike messenger, and Caleb swears in an unfamiliar language. The cat carrier is still banging against the door as the book trapped inside batters itself to pieces trying to get closer to its missing second volume. Essek follows its line of attack with his eyes. A storefront across the road. Signs advertising snacks, cold drinks, tobacco and… a pawn shop upstairs. Interesting.

“Caleb.” 

“Listen, he is the one who tried to cross without looking both ways.”

“That shop,” Essek clarifies. “Does anything seem off to you?”

Watching one spellbook attempt coitus with another, stolen, spellbook in the back of a magical pawnship is certainly some sort of cultural experience. Essek will have to think on how to frame it in his reports. Thankfully, Caleb is able to push both volumes into the cat carrier with a broom handle.

“So,” Essek says, much later, after traffic on the highway has thinned substantially and the noise from the backseat has subsided to a gentle page turning. “A successful adventure.”

Caleb glances at him sideways, soft smile tugging at his lips. Even though tinted lenses, Essek can mark the way the late afternoon sun picks out the golden strands in his hair. “We make a good team.”

With the city behind them, Caleb’s taken to driving one-handed, his other arm draped loosely over the armrest. It barely takes a twitch of real movement to bring their hands into alignment until Essek’s pinky just brushes against his. 

“We should celebrate,” Essek says, careful to keep his voice light. “A drink later, perhaps?”

Caleb looks his way again, and Essek pretends to be engrossed by an (out of date) oil change reminder stuck in the corner of the windscreen. 

“I’d like that.” Caleb’s hand covers his loosely, still just on the edge of deniable. “Whoever’s been hiding the good stuff in the kitchen restocked. We could borrow another bottle?”

“You’re not worried about someone walking in?” Essek arches an eyebrow, tilts his head just enough to let Caleb catch the expression in profile.

“We could drink in my room.” His thumb rubs along Essek’s wrist. Less deniable. “I’m trying out a new set of wards on the door.”

“I’d like that,” Essek repeats back to him, and Caleb smiles wider.

**_iii._ **

Caleb has to figure out who’s buying this wine. Mollymauk’s taste in liquors is beyond reproach, but the two bottles Caleb had liberated from the kitchen cupboards don’t seem quite to his taste. He’d like to know who he’s ripping off on the regular, if only to prepare some countermeasures.

“What are these books?” Essek asks, leaning over Caleb’s bedside table to peer at the stack teetering there. In his lap, Frumpkin lets out an indignant mewl at being jostled.

God, if Caleb had told himself two months ago that he’d have a beautiful boy sitting cross legged on his dorm room bed, drinking a third glass of wine while he goes through Caleb’s things with an airy presumptuousness—

He’d have been suspicious. 

“It’s a series. _Fillory and Further_ ,” he explains. “About a group of children who discover a secret magical land — _not_ like Narnia, these are much better than lions and heavy-handed Jesus allegories.”

“What’s this about a lion?” Essek asks. 

Right, cultural differences. Beyond the one Caleb remains hyper aware of. 

“Never mind. These were my favourite books as a child. I still like to reread them, sometimes. I know that must sound a little immature, but...”

“I liked mysteries,” Essek says. There’s something softer in his expression than Caleb’s seen before. Maybe the wine. “There is this one triogy — the title doesn’t really translate out of the original Undercommon, but the basic plot involves two youths who have to root out a traitor on the Dynasty high council based on the memories from their—”

He breaks off abruptly. Caleb feels the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. Something very nearly shared there. 

“Could I borrow one of these some time?” Essek asks, neatly pivoting to safer ground. “I don’t have much experience of human literature written for young people.” 

The thought of Essek in his own bed, flipping through Caleb’s old, well-thumbed volumes makes him strangely warm. Unless that’s also the wine. “Of course. I’d like to hear your thoughts afterwards.” 

“I’ll be sure to write you a full report.” Essek says it as though it’s a very funny joke. His teeth have gone very slightly purple from the wine and when he licks his bottom lip Caleb can see the same is true for his tongue. His mouth still looks so soft.

“That would be nice,” he hears himself say.

“Caleb?” 

“Yes?”

Essek sets his wine glass aside. “Would you like to kiss me now?” 

Frumpkin squeezes out from between them with a grumpy meow. Essek starts to pull away, like he means to apologize, and Caleb cups the back of his neck and reels him in again. His canines are a little sharper than anyone Caleb’s kissed before and his fingertips are ever so slightly cold against Caleb’s scalp. Everything still tastes like wine. 

He tips them back against the pillows and Essek follows him easily enough. For all the flirting they’ve done he’s honestly more eager than Caleb had expected. He would have assumed Essek was smart enough to hold more of himself back. 

Caleb loses track of time a little after that. If pressed, he could say they kiss long enough to smudge Essek’s sunglasses and ruin his carefully styled hair. Long enough to learn that the pressure of sharp teeth against Caleb’s pulse point makes his stomach swoop. Long enough to knock a wine glass off Caleb’s bedside table when Essek rolls them the wrong way on the mattress.

The glass hits the hardwood floor and shatters. Essek sits up with a start, one hand already moving in a formation Caleb has been trying to remember by sheer force of will for a month.

He catches Essek’s wrist and tries to keep his fingers loose, easy. “Could you show me how to do that too?”

There’s no edge to his voice. He’s sure of it. Perfectly casual. Curious, but not unduly so. When he turns it over afterwards, he can’t pick out what it is that gives him away. 

It’s a straight line from the bed to the door. If Essek hears any of Caleb’s protests on his way out, he doesn’t dignify them by turning around.

_**ix.** _

There is something heavy weighing down his chest, and the inside of his mouth tastes like sour ash. Essek carefully slits one eye open to stare at a low, white-painted ceiling. There’s a crack spidering out from one corner. The light coming in through the still open window is faint. The leading edge of dawn. 

He takes stock of the rest of his body. His muscles feel like they’ve been held tense for hours, his head is already pounding and his stomach aches like he’s been hollowed out. _Kinda unpleasant on the comedown_ , Fjord had said, before they’d begun the emotion bottling process. Essek makes a mental note to treat further remarks of this nature from the half-orc as the dire warnings they are. 

At least he’s kept his sunglasses in the aftermath, though they’re hanging too low on his nose to be of much use. He starts to sit up to see where the rest of his clothing’s gone to, and Frumpkin lets out a small, sleepy mewl and digs his claws into Essek’s shoulder—

Wait.

To his left is a small bedside table piled with books whose titles he does not need to read a second time. The ceiling remains unchanged. Essek takes a deep breath and chances a look to his right.

Caleb is curled on his side, freckled shoulders slipping free of the blankets and gingery hair in disarray. Essek remembers catching a handful of it earlier, close to Caleb’s scalp, and using the handhold to guide his plush, pink mouth onto his—

He looks back to the ceiling.

Frumpkin consents to be cradled against Essek’s chest like a baby until he’s slipped from the bed. Maybe the emotional hangover has spilled from magician to familiar. He leaves the cat on the pillow and dresses in the darkened, silent hall. Thank the Luxon’s burning banner that humans need so much sleep. 

Unfortunately, he’s forgotten about tieflings. 

“Hey, you’re still here.” Mollymauk is sprawled on the couch in a silk robe that covers very little of either his chest or his thighs, hands folded around a mug of something spicy and sweet smelling that makes Essek’s stomach gurgle painfully. “I thought everyone went home already. You want a coffee?”

He should go, but Essek’s been discovering he’s weaker than previously imagined all month long. Why stop now? “Please.”

“Follow me.” Mollymauk rises from the couch with a serene grace. He doesn’t even look tired. “Emotion bottles, hey? I haven’t done one of those since undergrad. Great stuff.” 

“What have you been doing all night?”

“Jester travelled us into the city for donuts. There’s a box on the counter if you want. She thought we should ask you if you wanted to come along, but it seemed like you were,” he trails off, gives Essek a lazy smile, “kinda busy.”

There are blueberry fritters in the box. Essek decides there’s more strategic value in shoving half a donut into his mouth than in answering. He eats two before Mollymauk finishes whatever advanced magic he’s undertaking with the cottage’s coffee maker. Essek moans a little when he presses the cup into his hands, and can’t even feel bad about it. It’s certainly no more embarrassing than the noise he’d made into Caleb’s mouth when he’d pushed Essek down on his too-soft mattress and pressed a thigh between his legs until his hips had bucked—

His next sip of coffee goes down the wrong way, and Mollymauk has to steady the cup to keep him from spilling the entire thing down his front.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

“You want me to pass any messages along to Caleb when he gets up?” Mollymauk makes a show of selecting another donut for himself, but his eyes are all too knowing. Essek studies his coffee instead, and remembers the weight of Caleb’s chin pillowed on his chest, after. The way he’d stroked a fingertip along the point of Essek’s ear, lulling him into the soft, indistinct space between waking and trance. The whisper of breath against skin when he’d spoken, barely heard.

 _"I’m sorry I am such a piece of shit_.” 

Essek doesn’t remember responding. 

He fishes into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulls out the volume he’d taken off the bedside table. _The World In the Walls_ by Christoper Plover. First in a series. “Tell Caleb I’m borrowing his book after all.” 

**xiii.**

“...my parents,” Caleb says.

Essek doesn’t respond. Not that there are any good responses he could offer, really. But Caleb had hoped for something. Hoped he might let him put this off a fraction of a moment longer.

“Do you know about the test? They probably don’t ask people like you to take it. It’s for the rest of us. All the would-be magicians they are not sure if they want in their club.”

No, he’s coming at this wrong. Too fast. If he’s careless at the start he’ll be hopeless by the time it matters. And then what is he going to do?

“Sorry, um, let me back up.” He moves to rub at his eyes and remembers the ropes only after he’s jerked Essek’s arms up several inches. “I will tell you a story about a boy who lived on a farm with his mother and father. Their names were Una and Leufrig. The boy’s name is not important. 

“The boy and his mother and father had come from far away to live on the farm, and the people in town did not know what to make of their strange clothes and the funny way they all talked. So the boy read books instead. Books with heroes who went on adventures to fantastic, magical places and always had friends around them. The boy wanted those magic places to be real more than anything else.

“And then one day he found a book he wasn’t supposed to find. Hidden away in his father’s study, in the locked drawer the boy wasn’t supposed to know about. Full of strange languages and formulas that moved on the page. Every day, when his father went out for a walk, the boy would sneak into the room to study the book. It took him months, but one day he understood. And when he moved his hands correctly and the four dancing lights appeared in the air above him, the world had changed forever. 

“After that, it was easier. The boy worked hard, but the magic seemed to want to come to him as much as he wanted it. The years passed and he grew stronger. Until someone took note.”

He’d been running an errand for his mother in town when the alleyway caught his eye. No one else on the street had seemed to find it strange that there was now a narrow gravel footpath between the pharmacy and the hair salon, even though they shared a building. Of course they wouldn’t. He’d known immediately it was for him.

Brakebills’ campus had looked the same at 17 as it did at 22. Green lawns, brick buildings and a campus chaperone waiting by the school sign. His first one had been petite and blonde, with her hair cropped tightly to the back of her neck. 

“Her name was Astrid,” Caleb says. “But that’s another story.”

_“Name?”_

_“Bren Aldric Ermendrud.”_

_She’d looked him up and down without trying to hide it. “You’re much younger than the rest of them. Very impressive.”_

_He would have followed her anywhere after that._

“They do the entrance exams in two parts here. Written questions to test the breadth of your knowledge and creativity and a practical demonstration to test everything else.”

“Which one did you fail?” Essek asks.

“Technically, both.” He can, after this long, almost manage a laugh over it. “I turned over my test paper and… it was all gone. Everything I knew. I choked. And then I ran.” 

They hadn’t tried to stop him at the door. Caleb’s always wondered if it was over for him right then, or if Brakebills’ indifference towards standard education practices extended to exam proctoring. 

At least they’d labeled their bathrooms well.

 _Astrid had been leaning against the wall next to the restroom when Bren finally stumbled out, pale and watery eyed and still tasting bile. “Not going so well, wunderkind?”_

_“I want to go home.”_

_“I can arrange that. But you should know what they’re going to do to you first…”_

“They take it all away. Tell you there’s magic, then steal it back if they don’t want you in their club. Astrid said they usually only carve out memories of the exam day, but — I was the only person in that building under 20. They had to know. And I couldn’t chance losing it. I couldn’t chance that.

“And Astrid said if it mattered that much to me, there was another professor I could meet, who sometimes offered… independent studies.

“I can’t tell you his name. Or what we did, exactly, for the next year. After it all came out there was an agreement. Non disclosure. Pretty powerful spells. I don’t… sometimes I’m glad of it. Not to have a choice in how much I can say.

“Here is the story I can tell you: Once there was a boy who knew he was destined for great things. And when he learned that there were dark forces at work in the world, who would conspire to—” his tongue goes taught against the roof of his mouth and Caleb winces as the muscles spasm. He’s gotten off track. There are rules to this now. “When he learned whatever story it was that person wanted him to believe, it rearranged the world again. Now it had enemies who deserved to be hurt. And it was alright to hurt for the greater good. The books had always said so.

“You’re bright, Essek. You already know there are so many ways to hurt people that don’t require battle magic. And some of those ways are not so different from what Brakebills does. A little cut in your mind here, a little polish there. Do you understand?”

This time it’s Essek who jerks Caleb’s arms sideways, until he can rest a hand against Caleb’s bare knee and squeeze.

“My parents were not magicians. My father’s family had passed down their little books of spells from one generation to the next, each learning fewer and fewer than the one before. When I told him he was going to Brakebills, he showed me the only spell knew. The dancing lights. But with a successful application of—”

It hurts more, the second time his tongue locks. A third and the pain will last for hours around his temples. A fourth and he won’t be out of bed for a day. He’d puzzled more than a few doctors on the locked ward trying to push those limits and failing. 

“If you can tell someone a good enough story, a simple man can be made to seem quite dangerous. Many things may seem necessary. Especially if you can add some… ah… realistic detail.

“The official story is that my parents died in a freak electrical fire in their barn. Somehow, the doors became stuck. It was an old building. Very flammable and badly wired. And I came home too late to save them. Officially.

“I, ah… the boy always tried to learn new things too quickly. He always pushed for more, no matter what was good for him. If the people around him had waited a few more months… maybe it would not have broken him, to hear the screams. He might have gone on to do all the things he and his teacher had planned, with no one to look for him or to wonder after his wellbeing.” 

“When did you find out they’d changed your memories?” Esseks thumb strokes along his knee, and the touch burns him. 

“Brakebills held a full investigation into the matter before we signed our agreement. Before you give a statement to the board there are spells cast to ensure everyone tells the truth. Even the truths they don’t know. They were kind in some ways. They had someone come to the hospital to cast them, to make sure I could be watched afterwards.” 

“So this agreement,” Essek says, ever the researcher. “They got this man’s name and your story. And what did you get?”

Caleb tries to smile. “Magic.” 

The ropes binding his wrists fall away. 

_**iv.** _

_Essek, don’t you like us any more?_

The threads of the spell he’s been holding tangle and snarl, and Essek’s feet hit the floor with a jolt. He’s rustier than he thought, if he can be unsettled that easily. Even a physical blow shouldn’t be enough to break the casting.

 _Essek?_ Jester’s voice comes again, slicing across his train of thought. _You pooping?_

_Hello Jester. Did you need something?_

_He says he’s not pooping_ , Jester says, the words strangely muffled in his head, not unlike the effect of someone covering a telephone mouthpiece with their hand. The logistics of Jester’s psychic abilities make Essek’s brain hurt. _What do you want me to say again?_

_I can still hear you, Jester._

_Sorry! Hold on just one second._

While he still hasn’t devised a system for recognizing Jester’s messages before they begin, her absence is noticeable. Essek pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to soothe away the beginnings of a headache, and gathers his thoughts for another attempt. 

Smoothly as ever, his feet leave the ground until he’s hovering half a foot above the dorm room carpet. 

_Okay, so Molly wants me to tell you to come to the cottage tonight._

Not even a wobble this time. Better. Though he’ll still need more practice to withstand a surprise--

_Essek are you even listening to me right now?_

With the spell up, at least it’s easy to adopt an air of distraction. _Please send my regrets. I’m going to be busy this evening._

 _See, this is why everyone thinks you don’t like them any more._ Jester says, in a tone Essek refuses to let himself think about. _And anyway this is about classwork, so whatever you were going to do, this is way more important._

He shouldn’t ask. He shouldn’t ask— _What classwork?_

_Oh, it’s super cool. Fjord says he knows how we can finally do battle magic..._

**xiv.**

His wrists hurt. Partially rope burn, but the stiffness in the joints is worse. No matter how much he rubs at them, he can’t keep the ache from settling in.

“Caleb?”

There’s a chime of a clock again, still far away. A single note, to mark the half hour. Thirty minutes to go before it’s all over, some way or another. That had seemed very important earlier, he recalls.

“Caleb,” Essek says again, more urgently. “Can you cast again?”

His fingers run the motions without him and small, glowing orb rises in the air. Essek’s watching him with a cautious expression and — and Caleb had forgotten how much of him there would be to see in the light. The orb dims, offering a few more strategic shadows.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know how to break the ropes.” And even if he did, Caleb’s not sure what would count as a completed trial. Mollymauk and Nott hadn’t specifically said that two successes were required to pass, but the last thing he needs to do is give Brakebills any more excuses to get rid of him.

“I was talking about rescuing your cat,” Essek says. “I thought you might want to do that before I tell you how I killed _my_ father.”

Caleb goes cold. It’s an uncharacteristically cruel joke. Not the kind of thing he’d have thought Essek had in him, even after everything. If he was sure he’s passed the trail, Caleb would be tempted to walk away and leave Essek to try and reveal his true self to the grass. If he was sure.

“You call them niffins, I think,” Essek says. “The being created when the spell overtakes the magician — niffin is the correct term?”

Oh. Not a joke.

“You’re serious.” 

“Get the cat, Caleb.” 

Frumpkin is nuzzling into his hand and purring even as he’s still materializing. At least someone’s happy to be here. 

“My father was not a very gifted magician. I made him very angry and when he attempted to cast a spell above his skill level it consumed him.” Essek pauses, holds his wrists out. The rope remains. “Well. Worth a try.”

“More detail might help,” Caleb suggests. There’s comfort in problem solving. He hopes Essek might feel that way too. “Were you fighting?”

“Usually.” Essek says, and his expression is… complicated. 

“What about?”

“My ingratitude. My lack of dedication. My ignorance.” Essek brushes his outstretched fingers against Frumpkin’s side. Pretending distraction. Caleb’s familiar enough with the techniques. “I told him I did not want to be… There are roles you are expected to play in the Dynasty, if your position is good and you show promise. I told him I wanted to be someone else.”

There are so many questions and none Caleb wants to ask. “Was he trying to hurt you?”

“No.” Clear. Steady. Not too rushed. He seems to believe it. “I think he was trying to make a point about the… I don’t know… the power of the Dynasty and what I was rejecting. I should have stopped him. I was already a better chronurgist. I knew he was stretching his limits.” 

“What kind of spell—” And just like that he’s stepped in it again. Essek’s face doesn’t move, but Caleb can feel him disengage. Like a waft of cold wind blowing between them. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, but that wasn’t me trying to—”

“You should have been more patient,” Essek says.

“What?” 

“You’re clever, and I wanted you to like me. You think I would never have tried to show off to you? To show you what Dynasty magic can do? You could have gotten what you wanted if you’d only waited longer.”

“I wish I hadn’t done that.” He doesn’t have any right to feel stung. But there’s something in Essek’s voice, in the careful blandness of that _I wanted you to like me_ , that makes his throat ache. “It’s not the person I’m trying to be.”

“Then I suppose we all want to be people we are not.” Essek makes a show of leaning forward and twisting his bound hands until he can rub the spot under Frumpkin’s chin that makes him rumble. It also has the effect of hiding his face. Caleb’s familiar with that trick as well. “I imagine my mother would thank you, if she knew, for reminding me of my responsibilities before I could do anything more foolish than a little flirting.” 

Still no right to feel anything here. And anyway, they are wasting time. Caleb can at least keep them focused on the task at hand. “Who are you supposed to be then? What is all this preparing you for?” 

“I’m very lucky,” Essek says tonelessly. “It’s extremely rare for a young soul to be selected as a diplomatic emissary for the Dynasty. Advancing our agenda is a high honour.”

“You remember this is a trial about honesty, ja?”

“Fine.” Essek jerks his head up, fixing Caleb with a look that’s either fiercely determined or edging into madness. “As any explanation involves several state secrets, I shall begin committing treasons. You will likely have much to ask, but as I believe we are short on time, please hold your comments until the end. Now, from the top: My people have a series of magical artefacts to which they attribute religious significance. These artefacts also grant certain souls the opportunity to be reborn into new bodies upon death.”

Caleb’s lips start to form a question.

“Yes, as in reincarnation. No, I have not personally experienced this. Yes, that is the source of many of my philosophical disputes with the Dynasty. No, I am not interested in being reborn, but if I were, yes, completing a lifetime of diplomatic service would raise me high enough in the esteem of my people to secure such a privilege.” Essek pauses, considering. “Actually, I think that gets to the heart of it. Now, questions?”

“Uh,” Caleb rubs at his forehead. “How has the Dynasty kept that a secret?”

“Humans magicians aren’t the only assholes who can modify memories,” Essek says.

“And… the philosophical differences?”

“I would think tonight would be an example of the hazards of blindly following tradition.” He’s got a point there, Caleb has to admit. 

“So what did you want to do instead?”

“This.” Essek stops, makes a face. “Not _this_ , this. Studying magic. Expanding our knowledge of the universe while drinking too much wine and…”

“Doing party drugs with tieflings?” Caleb suggests. 

“Making friends,” Essek says softly.

Both of them look down at the ropes. Nothing. 

“Here’s something embarrassing, then,” Essek says, and now Caleb can confidently identify that look as tilting towards madness. “I hadn’t walked anywhere outside of my home in three years before I got here. Because I developed a hovering spell. Surprisingly low energy cost, many practical applications, very impressive. Multiple members of my mother’s Den who had never bothered to learn my name engaged me in lengthy conversation about my formulations. First generation souls are so rarely interesting, you see. But a first generation soul who floats! That’s novel. So I did it for a month, and then two, and after that why ever bother stopping?”

He’s clenching his fingers together hard enough that Caleb can see his skin turn pale where it’s stretched over bones. “Essek—”

“Not enough? What else does the rope want to hear? Oh, did you know at about 15 most Dynasty children will start to remember their past lives? It’s often in dreams at first. Mornings become such an exciting time. I can remember my own mother making her first appearances at our breakfast table in years once I’d had my birthday. Of course, nothing ever came of it. By the time I was 17 we’d rarely see her before supper. But that’s not the kind of detail we want here, is it? I should tell you what it _felt_ like to know the woman who bore me would have preferred it had I been anyone else. Anyone but the child she raised—”

Frumpkin leaps onto his lap, and Essek breaks off, wild eyed and gulping for air.

“Breathe slow, okay?” Caleb says. “It’ll pass in a minute if you keep breathing.”

It’s more like five, but eventually Essek shudders and some of the tension goes out of his shoulders. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” He thinks about Essek’s hand on his knee earlier. He’s not sure if he should repay the favour. Too much complication still between them for that. Caleb settles for sending Frumpkin another mental nudge, until his familiar nestles against Essek’s ribs. 

“I think I’d like to stop trying now,” Essek says quietly, after another long moment’s passed.

“That’s fine.” 

“I’ll tell them you did everything correctly. There’s no reason you shouldn’t continue your studies just because your partner couldn’t—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Caleb says. “This place is— it’s pretty fucked up, ja?”

That earns him something that sounds like it could, almost, be a laugh. Essek wipes at his eyes best as he can with two bound wrists. “Not just me, then.”

“Not just you.” They can’t be more than a few minutes from midnight. He’s calmer about that than he’d expected to be. “I think you and I… If they don’t kick both of us out of here after tonight, do you want to try being friends? For real, this time. No bullshit.” 

The smile he gets is weak, but genuine. “I’d like that.” 

“Me too.”

Essek opens his mouth to say something. Shakes his head. Closes it. 

“What?”

“I’ve already become too used to being honest, apparently. I was going to say—” Essek cuts himself off with another shake of his head and near-laugh.

Caleb has the feeling he’s lost the thread of this conversation. “What?”

“Even after all this, I would like to kiss you again.”

There’s a soft swishing sound, as the rope around Essek’s wrists unknots itself and falls to the grass. Caleb’s still staring at it when Essek swears and starts to laugh in earnest.

No. Not quite a laugh. More of a— 

Honk. 

The transformation from person to goose is surprisingly swift. When he tries to remember it several weeks and thousands of miles later, from his cell in Brakebills’ Antarctic campus, Caleb will only recall a faint feeling of bones compacting and feathers sprouting from his skin. And the sound of a clock striking midnight somewhere below, as he and Essek take to the sky on new wings, to join the rest of the first year class on its long migration south. 

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry, they totally get together in season two. 
> 
> (I have way more lore developed for this AU than I have time to write, so if anyone wants to chat about Jester's plot, where she attempts to rescue her new friend Beau from The Library, hit me up in the comments!)


End file.
